Sunderbans

On the 15th of October, we visited Jamespur, a village in the Sunderbans district of West Bengal in collaboration with Anandpur Swami Vivekanand Seva to meet the young, buzzing minds there and listen to the stories they have to share. Sunderbans, a jungle district in West Bengal is known for its Royal Bengal Tigers but what often goes unnoticed is the thousands of young children dealing with poverty and hardships daily. And yet, with the dangers of animal attacks, forces of nature and poor living conditions, the children of Sunderbans are not deterred. Their spirit is infectious; their smile-inspiring. We consider it an honour to have met them and an even bigger privilege to get a glimpse into their daily lives in the deepest, rural-most part of the state.

We travelled to Sunderbans via road and ferry and after an adventurous 8 hours finally reached the village. Excited, new faces greeted us and we soon started introducing ourselves. The children were reserved, quiet, innocent. A reminder of the harsh reality of village life and still, extremely strong and ready to brave every curveball life throws their way. It took a while for them to warm up to us but when they did- they had vibrant, colourful stories to share. Mostly, ghost stories sparked an interesting conversation and each child had something to add to it. The villagers of Sunderbans are mostly illiterate and can only communicate in “Bengali’, the regional language. Hence, we translated our lesson plan into Bengali for this occasion. We introduced them to the extremely basic aspects of story-writing such as characters, dialogue and climax. They told us their stories pointing out the categories(characters, dialogue, climax) as they continued. Using a flashcard board they learnt a few new words with help through translation and played a game to choose the starting sentence of the story.

When asked what they wanted to draw, they were keen on making a house. A simple 4 walled house for someone but for them- a house of dreams, hopes, aspirations, longing. They proved to be quite the “Matisse” as they used different colours to fill in the scenery and sketch out the lines. We also taught them about perspective and colour theory in art which they understood with ease.

Interestingly, the class was not conducted in a classroom. Rather, a walk-through bridge over a beautiful pond. Classrooms don’t have to necessarily exist within four walls and our day trip proved just that! We will always cherish the memories we made there.